Is it worth it to upgrade?

[rogersugarsugar]

I've encountered a number of trials in my attempts to get a working SugarCRM for my company. I know that once everyone starts to use it, it will prove to be very useful.

What I've encountered:

- SugarCRM not working with a stock Linux distribution (the distribution's apache, php, and mysql. Maybe the issue had a simple solution, but the install wizard is useless for helping you to figure out what it might be.

- SugarCRM appliance. While this seems to guarantee that it will work, it's on an incompllete operating system - even standard utilities are not available (i.e. printing, email).

- SugarCRM installed using it's own versions of apache, php, and mysql. This worked, but before I was finished "playing" with the system, the latest upgrade became available, which I applied. Then as I played more, I found that certain features didn't work (but which another person reported was solved by loading the complete source rather than applying the patches). This is something we simply can't do every time there's a new upgrade. On top of that, the system scheduled a manual update for me to merge certain files - how? It doesn't say!

I'm presenting various options to the boss, and hoping for input from the users before a decision is made.

Frankly, I think the best option may be to simply do a full, clean install, and then run the server into the ground without upgrading. This may mean some trouble migrating everything to a new server in the future, when installing the (then) latest version (i.e. what tables have changed?), but is that any worse than having things fail after every upgrade?

What are other people doing?

Thanks.

[malcolmh]

Hi,

For a stable LAMPP stack take a look at XAMPP www.apachefriends.org. Sugar will run on this with only a few minor teaks to the php settings (timeout, file upload, memory limit etc).

[andydreisch]

Hi rogersugarsugar, thanks for the feedback. The Sugar team is aware of your post. I have a couple clarifying questions for you:

"SugarCRM not working with a stock Linux distribution" -- We just want to make sure we are clear on the meaning of "stock" in this context.

"... Then as I played more, I found that certain features didn't work (but which another person reported was solved by loading the complete source rather than applying the patches)." Can you give me an example of this and/or point to a thread? We're very curious how a patch upgrade's behavior differs from a base install.

Andy

[rogersugarsugar]

Hi rogersugarsugar, thanks for the feedback. The Sugar team is aware of your post. I have a couple clarifying questions for you:

"SugarCRM not working with a stock Linux distribution" -- We just want to make sure we are clear on the meaning of "stock" in this context.

CentOS 5.0 (including supplied mysql, apache, and php). I tried to get sugar source to use what I already had, but the install wizard kept failing - Couldn't find mysql, but it was up and running, and I could find nothing helpful to see what it was looking for.

I tried the rPATH appliance CD next, but found that it lacked even basic *nix utilities, like printing and file transfer, so even though sugar itself worked, I found that in practical terms, it wasn't useful in the grand scheme of things - we have a server that needs to serve up a CRM, SAMBA, and other items.

I next asked for advice on what was successful for others, and FC6 was mentioned. Although I created the CDs, I actually reinstalled CentOS 5.0, and used the Bitrock binary instead, installing Bitrock's versions of mysql, apache, and php. This worked, AFAIK, until I upgraded from 4.5.1.d to 4.5.1.e, but stuff that wasn't working wasn't actually tested.

I have now blown away the upgraded version, and just completed a Bitrock 4.5.1e install, with the Bitrock versions mentioned before.

Still some problems:

Email monitoring doesn't work - I used the stock schedule and entered the suggested crontab line (except that for /etc/crontab, I have to supply a username to run under (root, in this case). Check Mail works, though.

HTML text doesn't work for Linux. Isn't there something available for this?

"... Then as I played more, I found that certain features didn't work (but which another person reported was solved by loading the complete source rather than applying the patches)." Can you give me an example of this and/or point to a thread? We're very curious how a patch upgrade's behavior differs from a base install.

Andy

I believe it was a "hot topic" today on the install/upgrade help forum. A couple or few pages of messages. If you can search for my username, I'm sure it will show a post in that thread from me for today:

http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24350